"In the pub debate of Lara or Sachin Tendulkar, I would go Lara every time. Sachin is a magnificent player, that's a given, but there was something more exciting, more flamboyant about Brian"
Monday 18 May 2020 13:01, UK
Who did the Sky Sports Cricket pundits idolise growing up? Every Monday, we will be asking one of our experts for their cricketing hero and this week it's Mark Butcher's turn...
A lot of the time your heroes are older than you or non-contemporaries but Brian Lara is someone I just loved watching and loved playing against.
I think the first time I really became aware of him was on West Indies' tour of Australia - his first tour of Australia - in 1993, his breakthrough, I suppose, on the international scene.
He made 277 at Sydney and I was like, 'wow, who is this young fella?'
My understanding is that Sir Garry Sobers - my Dad's favourite player - was similar in terms of the flourish of the bat.
But batting had become a rather mechanical thing throughout the eighties and nineties as there were a hell of a lot of fine fast bowlers around and batsmen weren't having extravagant back-lifts anymore.
So to see Lara come out and play so freely and naturally was brilliant. I'm sure there was a lot of hype around him at the time but when I saw that innings it was like he had come out of nowhere.
I can't think of anyone who compares to him - he was an absolute original.
There was a conversation going around on Twitter a while ago, one I was copied in on, about players you wouldn't teach kids to bat like and someone mentioned Lara. I disagreed because fundamentally there isn't anything wrong with what he does.
His bat grip is very orthodox, he was very sideways on most of the time - the only thing extravagant was the height to which he brought the bat back.
Even that, though, was a picture that my Dad and I had in mind when he was working with me as I tried to remodel my game ahead of the 2001 Ashes - how I was going to hold the bat, how I was going get ready to present it to the ball by taking the hands back higher.
It looks dangerous, looks like it's fraught with ways to go wrong, but if you think about hitting a golf ball, you take the club back a long way in order to bring it down and hit the ball forward. Cricket is no different.
You see lots of young batsmen and they don't bring the bat back enough, so have no real momentum. Brian certainly did, though. Watching him brought a smile to my face as it just looked magnificent.
I was playing for England when he scored his world-record 400 at St John's in 2004 - I even managed two half-centuries of my own!
Brian had not made a run all series, and we thought we had him caught behind off Andrew Flintoff first ball, but there was an air of inevitability about it from the time he got to about 60.
I have done a lot of commentary work with Darren Ganga over the years and the story goes that before that game Brian turned to Darren said, 'I will be the leading run-scorer in the series' despite only having made 100 in six knocks before then and us having a number of players well in front.
Ganga just laughed at him, as you would do. Then he had another 400 at the end of it, relegating yours truly into second place on the run-scoring charts. He blew us all out of the water.
I might have seen him play better - the pitch was very flat and as we were 3-0 up in the series the job was done almost.
I think Steve Harmison had been warned out of the attack and we had had quite a good party in Barbados and Antigua after being the first England side to win in the West Indies in 36 years!
But once Brian passed fifty, it looked like his concentration was bang on and he wanted to make up for the fact he hadn't scored a run in the series. There was very little we could do to stop him.
Then it was simply a case of how long he could concentrate because nothing else was going to stop him. No lateral movement, no pace, no turn, no nothing. And he just belted it to all parts.
Earlier in the series, I am not sure he ever got past Flintoff and Harmison - they terrorised him in the first three Test matches, although Simon Jones and Matthew Hoggard also got him out.
I remember having a drink and chat with him after the Trinidad Test match and he said he was going to bed at night thinking of getting bounced by these guys, so it was a real reversal of England going to the West Indies and being terrorised by Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Patrick Patterson etc.
Obviously Harmy's 7-12 in Jamaica was the headline performance but he bowled utterly magnificently in the next game in Trinidad. He bowled like the wind and swung it out on a real slow pitch.
It felt scary fielding at slip, so I can only imagine what it was like facing it. It was tough for anyone, even someone as great as Brian.
Only Lara's former West Indies team-mate, Shvinarine Chanderpaul, has been involved in more Test match losses but there is no shame in that whatsoever.
Would Brian have been required to perform the feats he did if he had Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes ahead of him or played in a stronger West Indies team? He played in the era he played in and was utterly magnificent throughout it.
In the pub debate of Lara or Sachin Tendulkar, I would go Lara every time. Sachin is a magnificent player, that's a given, and there may be a bias there as, like Lara, I am a left-hander but there was something more exciting, more flamboyant about Brian.
As I have moved into punditry, I have gone back in time to look for my heroes, I suppose.
I grew up listening to Richie Benaud and watching the guys on Channel 9 in the seventies and eighties - the Twelfth Man Tapes laughed at their chemistry but it really was there in real life.
And then, of course, you had Bob Willis.
Working for Sky, doing documentaries, looking up great moments in people's careers and from great matches, it always seemed that Bob was the one with the microphone in his hand, absolutely nailing the moment.
